Assessing children in Reception

Following the changes to the Development Matters Framework introduced in 2020, many schools have contacted us at Insight to say that they are unsure how to assess their Early Years pupils. In this post, we’ll look at what you have to do, what resources are available, what your options are and what we suggest you do.

What do you have to do?

Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA): Schools have to complete this statutory assessment within the first 6 weeks of pupils starting Reception, following the guidance here. As the guidance states, the ‘The RBA will be used to create school-level progress measures for primary schools which will show the progress pupils make from reception until the end of key stage 2′. Schools are able to access narrative statements on how pupils performed in the RBA. There is no legal requirement for schools to report RBA narrative statements to parents, although the guidance suggests it ‘may be helpful to use them as the basis of any feedback to parents‘. Parents can request their child’s RBA narrative statement if they wish.

EYFS Profile: This must be completed before the end of June in Reception and submitted to your Local Authority (who will normally submit this to the DfE) following the guidance here. All pupils are assessed as Emerging or Expected against each of the 17 aspects according to the Early Learning Goal statements. Teachers must provide parents with their child’s EYFS Profile results and offer them the opportunity to discuss this with the teacher.

Parent reports: Schools have a duty to report attainment in all 17 aspects of the EYFS Profile at the end of Reception. As above, schools do not have to report the RBA narrative statements to parents.

What resources are available?

Development Matters framework: This is non-statutory curriculum guidance for the EYFS, with guidance for Birth to three, three and four year olds and Reception. Whilst there are 17 early learning goals in the EYFS Profile, the curriculum statements in Development Matters are grouped into seven broader Areas of Learning (not the 17 individual aspects as per the previous framework). This should mean a lower workload for internal assessments during the year. However, making the Profile assessment at the end of Reception needs additional consideration if pupils haven’t reached the expected standard. For example, a pupil could be seen as below a typical level of development in Literacy overall, while being Expected in Reading but Emerging in Writing. As such, it isn’t appropriate to try to calculate the separate 17 EYFS Profile assessments from the overall assessments in the 7 Areas of Learning.

Birth to 5 Matters: This is non-statutory guidance for the EYFS which uses 17 aspects that are similar to the old Development Matters framework, with separate detailed curriculum statements for each aspect. It should be noted that the Birth-to-5 aspects do not match those used for the EYFS Profile, so staff using this guidance need to make termly judgements of attainment against the 17 Birth-to-5 aspects each term and then re-assess all pupils at the end of Reception for the EYFS Profile. The Birth-to-5 curriculum statements are grouped into age ranges (similar to the previous Development Matters framework) but as these are ranges which overlap, they are not designed for use as an assessment scale or flightpath for pupils to progress along.

What are your options for assessing children in the EYFS?

Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA): Whilst you could try to record children’s RBA answers, the assessment is not designed to be used in this way and there is little to be gained from doing so. The RBA questions have different degrees of difficulty, and differently pupils will get different numbers of questions depending on how many they answer correctly, so it is not appropriate to compare scores by simply adding up the number of correct answers. The pupil data report schools receive is simply the number of correct responses to different questions asked of those being assessed.

EYFS Profile: DfE guidance is that ‘the early learning goals should not be used as a curriculum. They should be used as an assessment during the summer term of the reception year.‘ Despite this, some schools use the statutory terminology when recording internal assessments, often with the intention of making the end of year assessment easier. As the EYFS Profile grades are now simply a binary choice between Emerging or Expected – whereas previously there was a third Exceeding grade – this doesn’t tend to help identify pupils who are a long way behind expectations, or indeed those who are significantly ahead. These grades are also problematic as a starting point for showing progress into Y1. By comparing a broader range of Y1 grades with the EYFS Profile grades, it could look like pupils are making much more progress in Y1 than is really the case.

The Development Matters Framework now groups the statements into broad year group ranges, replacing the age in months. These are intended to show the attainment level for pupils who don’t meet the expected standard at the end of Reception. As such, they shouldn’t be used as a checklist of attainment or a teaching-planner during early years. The age bands are now so broad, and of different sizes, that they aren’t very useful as a linear scale or set of levels for pupils to move through. There is also no official way to sub-divide these bands into “emerging”, “developing” or “secure”, as there is no guidance on what pupils should be able to do by any term.

Our suggestions

As the Assessment Handbook for the EYFS Profile says, the primary focus of the assessment is ‘to support a successful transition from the EYFS to year 1′. To ensure your data can be compared over time, it usually makes sense for early years to use the same terminology for internal assessments as used for older year groups. Using a common language should help staff compare attainment throughout Reception and into Y1, and provide a clearer picture of whether a child is making progress within your curriculum.

At Insight, we generally advise schools to record their own baseline assessments at the start of Reception. Schools can choose whether to make their internal assessments against the detailed 17 aspects of the EYFS profile or the 7 broader areas in Development Matters. Whilst both approaches have merit, the benefit of tracking the 17 aspects in Insight is that you will get a prediction of who is on track for a Good Level of Development and the system can automatically complete your statutory EYFS Profile at the end of the year. Pupils could, for example, be assessed against each of the 17 aspects each term using a simple scale of ‘Well Below’, ‘Just Below’, ‘On-track’ and ‘Above’ based on the teacher’s professional judgement, and Insight will convert the assessments into ’emerging’ and ‘expected’ according to their colour-coding.

Bear in mind that just because the DfE only require you to assess children as Emerging or Expected at the end of EYFS, you are not restricted to these terms for the purpose of ongoing tracking. You can do whatever is most appropriate for your school and a more nuanced judgement may provide your Key Stage 1 team with more useful and consistent information.

Assessing in this way will give a useful broad picture of attainment of the cohort for SLT and Governors, and provide a comparable baseline for showing progress into Y1.